Zhang Li believes that in a successful exhibition, many facets must be considered. For instance, for the sake of B2B development, the amount of international vendors, booth prices, local characteristics of the national and regional populations, the number and quality of local startups, and the momentum of building the entire exhibition must all be considered.

Taiwan’s Distinctive Industrial Background: Uniquely Competitive when Building an Exhibition

Concerning the question of the exhibition’s competitiveness, Zhang Li believes that for the Asia region, Mainland China is considerably active in terms of information and communication exhibitions. However, currently no other exhibition can be seen as being more influential than COMPUTEX. The reason is that in the past, Taiwan’s research and development personnel for electronics and engineering produced a considerably high output.

Figure 1 : Taipei Computer Association (TCA) Deputy Director-General Zhang Li

Out of tens of thousands of graduates, 40% of them were involved in research and development. This has given Taiwan’s technology industry an extremely solid foundation. Although Taiwan’s population is much smaller than other powerful countries, effectively increasing the aptitude of the population gives it bright prospects.

Moreover, Taiwan has accumulated a foundation in manufacturing telecommunications products and built international connections that are ahead of Mainland China. This is the reason why until this day Intel and Microsoft cannot do without Taiwan.

Zhang Li said that the competitiveness of some industries is a result of democratization. Taiwan has a number of graduates from top universities with PhD degrees who are liable to be on duty with machines throughout the night, while elsewhere in Mexico a high school student gets out of class at five o’clock and doesn’t know what to do.

The hardworking personality of Taiwanese people allows for the excellence of COMPUTEX as a global technology exhibition. He emphasized that industrial development is not the equivalent of exhibition scales. Japanese and Korean enterprises are primarily large companies; therefore, they do not necessarily have to participate in exhibitions to get orders.

In other words, Japan and Korea do not have the kinds of exhibitions that could contend with COMPUTEX. In contrast, Taiwan’s industries are comprised of small and medium sized businesses, and environments for these industries naturally take shape. This makes setting up exhibitions considerably easy. Simply put, there is an inseparable relationship between the lifestyle and cultural background of Taiwan and the movement of the industries.

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Low Cost Input Yields High Orders

“Considering the amount of money that the companies who participate in the exhibition must invest in comparison with other international exhibitions, participating in the COMPUTEX exhibition is considerable attractive. The cost of participating in an overseas exhibition is easily NT$ 1,230,00; whereas at COMPUTEX, one stall only costs about NT$60,000.,” said Zhang Li.

Zhang Li remembers that when CeBIT first came out, there were plenty of media reports suggesting that this exhibition would later replace COMPUTEX; however, the general verdict is that this situation never ended up taking place. Echoing what people in the past have said about the number of global buyers, if international participants in the exhibition could all have their own exhibitions, it would be great and new exhibitions would pop up. They could try one or two times to see the results. However, considering he benefits of cost input and orders, COMPUTEX still has a definite advantage.

He pointed out that in Germany the fee for a standard stall is not cheap when fees for airplane tickets and living accommodations are factored in. Many Taiwanese businesses, because of their limited scope and considering problems with the costs, are less willing to participate in this exhibition. However manufacturers can still go if they do not want to give up the opportunity to participate in the CeBIT exhibition. Many businesses believe that they do not necessarily have to participate in the exhibition itself.

Another choice is going to Germany and booking other hotel meeting rooms for talks. Even so, up until now COMPUTEX is still alive and in good health. Zhang asked, “If it were you and you wanted to spend hundreds of thousands of NT dollars in costs and get back millions to ten millions in orders, wouldn’t you participate in the exhibition?”

The Important Point is Not the Scope or the Topics – It is Creating an Atmosphere and Accepting Orders

As for COMPUTEX not having many new topics, Zhang Li said, “Operations aren’t dead.” According to his analysis, from people’s individual operations in the past, to mobile operations, to the so-called Internet of Things, all of them are related to the same thing: operations. They are the same as communications – they appeared early on and it is only their form that has changed.

What Zhang Li says is no secret and up until now the Internet is very developed. Many large companies constantly bring up new topics. The media also knows these topics. However, at exhibitions, the media just wants to know whether or not there are new things, or what important or indexical figures will appear at COMPUTEX. Today everyone will look at the exhibition, and of course they will not do it to just see the stage or the lighting effects. The important point is who the people are that will be on the stage.

To the organizers, there is no way that every year all of the large companies can be invited to participate in the exhibition and make speeches. However, every year as long as the majority of the large companies participate, that is enough and allows for the creation of a complete atmosphere.

After all, every company does not always have a new product every year, and participating once every other year is another option, He emphasizes that the key is not the size and scope of participation in the exhibition but molding vigor and strength and being able to bring in a lot of revenue for the companies.

Supposing at this year’s COMPUTEX that the number of booths for participants or the participating companies goes down – that is still OK. As long as the majority of businesses can still continue to receive orders, that is significant. If this year’s other information and communication technology B2B exhibitions all disappeared, and only COMPUTEX were left, then COMPUTEX would still definitely have importance and value.

Zhang Li says with all respect that the media will not be happy if the scope is too small or if there are no new exhibitions. But what the companies are concerned about is whether participating in this exhibition will bring them more orders. You could say that the perspectives on what they care about are completely different.

Rationally Viewing Taiwan’s Industrial Background and Structure

“We must rationally view both the strong and weak points of Taiwan’s industrial characteristics,” said Zhang Li.

Zhang Li believes that Taiwan’s domestic market is not big in and of itself. If you want to expand its scope, you need export-oriented firms and even global marketing. Taiwan’s industrial characteristics are different from Japan’s and Korea’s. Taiwan for the most part is comprised of small and medium sized enterprises.

Zhang Li, however, sees increases in the capacities of Taiwan’s new technology companies in recent years as being even more important. According to data statistics that have been accumulated in the past, every year 20% of the companies at COMPUTEX participate for the first time.

Zhang sees unlimited startup potential in Taiwan, and he believes that this is the reason that a definite advantage exists in Taiwan. These startup enterprises all need a common platform to for them to be publicized. To go a step further, Taiwan must have considerably strong momentum for startups in order to be able to support a specialized B2B exhibition.

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Zhang Li recommends that Taiwan could study nearby Singapore’s method and try bringing in outside talent from around the world in order to create more value for Taiwanese enterprises.

Zhang Li also stated that this industry cannot have one person do well while the others are not well. Instead, everyone should do well, and the whole industry should develop in order to be healthy.